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      Trump bemoans lack of immigrants from majority-white countries to the US

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      Donald Trump bemoaned a lack of immigrants to the US from “nice” countries “like Denmark [or] Switzerland”, offering millionaire donors at a Florida fundraiser a reprise of infamous racist Oval Office remarks about people coming to America from “shithole countries”.Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president again, despite facing 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties for tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.According to the New York Times, which cited an unnamed attendee at the Saturday event in Palm Beach, Trump told his audience: “These are people coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster.“And when I said, you know, ‘Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries,’ I’m trying to be nice. Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”The millionaires in the crowd “chuckled”, the Times said.Trump made his “shithole countries” remark in January 2018, in a White House meeting on immigration reform.“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to the Washington Post, which cited aides briefed on the meeting.Trump then “suggested that the US should instead bring more people from countries such as Norway [and] suggested he would be open to more immigrants from Asian countries because he felt that they help the US economically”.That kicked off a storm over Trump’s racism. Six years later, the remarks about “nice countries” reported by the Times landed in a country well used to the 45th president’s vulgarity, racism and lying.Trump is using so-called chaos at the southern US border as a central campaign issue, to the extent of directing Republicans to block bipartisan reform.On Saturday, the Times said, Trump complained of criticism over his “shithole countries” comment: “And you know, they took that as a very terrible comment, but I felt it was fine.”He also complained that migrants were coming to the US from Yemen, “where they’re blowing each other up all over the place”, and said migrants from Latin America “make the Hells Angels look like extremely nice people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They’ve been shipped in, brought in, deposited in our country, and they’re with us tonight. In fact, I don’t think they’re on this island, but I know they’re on that island right there. That’s West Palm. Congratulations over there. But they’ll be here. Eventually, they’ll be here.”Palm Beach, where Trump spoke at the home of a billionaire, is 93.8% white. West Palm Beach, across a waterway, is nearly a third people of color.The Times also reported that Trump claimed Joe Biden had “soiled” the Resolute desk in the Oval Office at the White House.“The attendee who witnessed the moment said that dinner guests laughed and that Mr Trump’s remark was interpreted as the former president saying that Mr Biden had defecated on the desk,” the paper said.
      Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?On Thursday 2 May, 8-9.15pm GMT, join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More

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      Murder victim’s sister says Trump didn’t speak to family despite his claim he did

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      Donald Trump used a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to describe meeting the family of a woman killed by an immigrant in order to spin a narrative about what he calls “Biden’s border bloodbath” – except Ruby Garcia’s family now say he never did.Garcia, 25, was found shot to death on highway US-131 on 22 March of this year. Court records later showed that her boyfriend confessed to killing her and dumping her body.The man, Brandon Ortiz-Vite, had come to the US as a child and was allowed to stay as a so-called “Dreamer”. He was deported in 2020 before re-entering again without documents.Many have read Garcia’s murder not as an illegal immigration issue but one of domestic violence, given authorities said Garcia and Ortiz-Vite were dating.Trump tells the story differently. “She lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people,” Trump said about Garcia. “I spoke to some of her family.”But according to her sister, Mavi Garcia, who is acting as a family spokesperson, neither Trump nor his campaign had reached out to her or her relatives.She said Trump’s comments were intended merely to blame immigrants for crime in order to justify a border crackdown.“It’s always been about illegal immigrants,” Garcia told the local news station Target 8. “Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?”The Trump campaign has yet to comment on the former president’s claim, but the Washington Post reported he did not mention Garcia again at a stop in Wisconsin later on Tuesday.On Monday Trump had called into a Michigan radio show before heading to Michigan and Wisconsin, two crucial battleground states, to highlight the immigration theme, which he has called the top issue in the 2024 election.“This is a horrible incident with Ruby,” Trump told the conservative host Justin Barclay. “Let Ruby’s relatives and everybody know that we’d love to say hello to them.”Last month, Trump did meet with family and friends of Laken Riley, a nursing student who became a potent symbol for the border issue after an undocumented person from Venezuela was charged with her murder.But Mavi Garcia told Target 8 that Trump was misleading people.“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” Mavi Garcia said. More

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      Netanyahu told Senate Republicans Gaza strategy would remain unchanged – as it happened

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      The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, indicated he rejected a request from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address his lawmakers today.“When you make these issues partisan, you hurt the cause of Israel,” Schumer told reporters when asked if he turned down Netanyahu. US media outlets report that prime minister wanted to talk to Democratic senators during a closed-door meeting.Last week, Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States, broke with Netanyahu and called on Israel to hold new elections. He criticized the prime minister for the high civilian death toll in Gaza, and said Netanyahu was among a group of politicians and groups who were undermining efforts to implement a two-state solution to the crisis between Israel and Palestine.Texas has experienced a case of judicial whiplash, after the supreme court yesterday allowed its law giving police the power to arrest suspected illegal border crossers to go into effect. But just hours later, a federal appeals court blocked it again, and the matter seems set for further legal wrangling that may well wind up before the US supreme court at some point in the future. Back in Washington DC, the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, indicated that he turned down a request from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address his lawmakers, warning that support for the country should not become “partisan”. But Republican senators were happy to hear from Netanyahu, who said the prime minister told them he had no plans to change his military strategy in Gaza.Here’s what else happened:
      House Republicans pressed on with the impeachment investigation of Joe Biden, while Democrats attacked their witnesses’ credibility, and one showed up in a Vladimir Putin mask.
      A Georgia judge allowed Donald Trump to appeal his ruling last week that prosecutor Fani Willis could stay on the election subversion case against him, but only if the special counsel Nathan Wade leaves.
      The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said he understood where Trump was coming from when he accused Democratic Jews of hating Israel and their religion – comments that drew accusations of antisemitism.
      Biden announced new rules that could dramatically slash emissions from passenger cars and trucks to fight the climate crisis.
      A special election in California to replace the former House speaker Kevin McCarthy appears headed to a runoff between two Republicans, likely to Johnson’s chagrin.
      In an address to Senate Republicans, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had no plans to change his military strategy in Gaza, Reuters reports.Netanyahu spoke to Republicans via videolink at their behind-closed-door lunch today, days after Chuck Schumer, the chamber’s Democratic majority leader, broke with him and called for new elections in Israel.“He’s going to do what he said he’s going to do. He’s going to finish it,” the Republican senator Jim Risch said after hearing from Netanyahu.Here’s more, from Reuters:
      Wednesday’s meeting underscored the politicization of Washington’s Israel policy. Netanyahu has long been aligned with Republicans, who accused Schumer of seeking to “overthrow” the Israeli leader.
      “We asked … him for an update and we got it on the war, on the release of the hostages and in the efforts to defeat Hamas. We told him Israel has every right to defend themselves and he said that’s exactly what they continue to do,” Senator John Barrasso said.
      Democratic leaders have been grappling with divisions in their party over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza five months into a war that began with attacks on Israel by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.
      …
      Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Netanyahu had addressed civilian casualties and the need to get more aid into Gaza. He said Netanyahu was “very supportive” of plans to build a temporary pier and bring in aid by sea.
      “He’s very sensitive to the fact that every civilian casualty is a very unfortunate event,” Risch said.
      Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Netanyahu had made a presentation and then taken questions from senators.
      “I made it clear to him, that it’s not the business of the United States to be giving a democratic ally advice about when to have an election or what kind of military campaign they may be conducting,” McConnell told reporters.
      The aftershocks from Republican insurgents’ historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, and his subsequent resignation from Congress, continue to reverberate, notably in the race to replace him in his central California district.Vince Fong, a Republican California assemblyman, currently leads the official vote count after the Tuesday special election to replace McCarthy. But he does not appear to have won the 50% support necessary to avoid a runoff, meaning Fong will have to stand in May against whoever comes in second place. That is on course to be his fellow Republican Mike Boudreaux, with the Democratic candidate, Marisa Wood, trailing in third place – not much of a surprise, considering McCarthy’s former district is considered California’s most Republican.However that race ultimately turns out, the biggest loser last night may have been the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, who is trying to pass legislation with a tiny majority. Had Fong won, it would have given the speaker a sorely needed vote, but now he’ll have to wait till May to see McCarthy’s replacement seated.McCarthy’s decision to resign after being ousted from Republican leadership – which came a year after Nancy Pelosi left House Democratic leadership – comes amid a period of turnover in Golden State politics. The longtime Democratic US representatives Anna Eshoo, Tony Cárdenas and Grace Napolitano have also announced plans to step down.Two weeks after California’s primary, the race to replace Eshoo in her Bay Area district remains exceptionally close. Just two votes separate the Democratic candidates Evan Low, a state assemblyman, and Joe Simitian, a Santa Clara county supervisor, with ballot counting ongoing. The winner will advance to the November general election and face the Democrat Sam Liccardo, the former mayor of San Jose.Chuck Schumer’s public criticism of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his call for the country to hold elections came after months of deliberations, the Democratic Senate leader revealed to the New York Times this weekend.“I said to myself, ‘This may hurt me politically; this may help me politically.’ I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t do it,” Schumer, who represents New York, said in an interview. He added that the point of his speech “was to say you can still love Israel and feel strongly about Israel and totally disagree with Bibi Netanyahu and the policies of Israel”.Schumer noted he spent about two months working on his speech, writing multiple drafts of an address intended to make clear he believed Netanyahu is “the fount of the problems”.The Senate leader has faced considerable criticism for his public break with Netanyahu, most notably from Republicans. Here’s more on that:The rift between the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, became public suddenly, amid continuing reports of terrible humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Here’s the latest on that, from the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont:The accusation by the UN and other humanitarians that Israel may be committing a war crime by deliberately starving Gaza’s population is likely to significantly increase the prospect of legal culpability for the country, including at the international court of justice.Amid reports that the Israel Defense Forces are hiring dozens of lawyers to defend against anticipated cases and legal challenges, the charge that Israel has triggered a “man-made famine” by deliberately obstructing the entry of aid into Gaza is backed by an increasing body of evidence.Already facing a complaint of genocide from South Africa at the ICJ, the UN’s top court – including an allegation that senior Israeli political officials have incited genocide in public statements – Israel is also the subject of a provisional emergency ruling by the court ordering it to admit life-saving aid to Gaza.The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, indicated he rejected a request from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address his lawmakers today.“When you make these issues partisan, you hurt the cause of Israel,” Schumer told reporters when asked if he turned down Netanyahu. US media outlets report that prime minister wanted to talk to Democratic senators during a closed-door meeting.Last week, Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States, broke with Netanyahu and called on Israel to hold new elections. He criticized the prime minister for the high civilian death toll in Gaza, and said Netanyahu was among a group of politicians and groups who were undermining efforts to implement a two-state solution to the crisis between Israel and Palestine.Pete Aguilar, chair of the House Democratic caucus, said that Donald Trump “doesn’t belong anywhere near the Oval Office” following the ex-president’s comments that there will be a “bloodbath” in the US if he loses the election.Aguilar said:
      He represents a clear and present danger to democracy. His comments over the weekend …should be taken both literally and seriously … Donald Trump would sacrifice our way of life in a heartbeat if he thought that it could bring him political power. He doesn’t belong anywhere near the Oval Office and don’t just take our word for it – the former VP, his former chief of staff, his former defense secretary, and his former secretary of state all agree.
      Here are more details from Punchbowl News on Chuck Schumer’s reported refusal to allow Benjamin Netanyahu to address the Senate Democratic caucus:According to Schumer, having Netanyahu address the caucus would “not be helpful to Israel”, Punchbowl News reports.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has declined a request from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address the Senate Democratic Caucus, Punchbowl News reports.According to the outlet, Schumer said these conversations should not happen “in a partisan manner”.Netanyahu is scheduled to address Senate Republicans virtually during their lunch meeting today.Last week, Schumer sparked backlash from Republican leaders and Netanyahu’s Likud party after he called for new elections in Israel and criticized Netanyahu’s leadership.Since October, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians while forcibly displacing 2 million survivors across the narrow strip.Texas has experienced a case of judicial whiplash, after the supreme court yesterday allowed its law giving police the power to arrest suspected illegal border crossers to go into effect. But just hours later, a federal appeals court blocked it again, and the matter seems set for further legal wrangling that may well wind up before the supreme court at some point in the future. Back in Washington DC, Republicans pressed on with their impeachment investigation into Joe Biden, despite revelations that a key source for their unproven allegations received information from Russian intelligence. At a hearing of the House oversight committee, Democrats hammered the credibility of the GOP’s witnesses, and one lawmaker made the point by showing up in a Vladimir Putin mask.Here’s what else is happening:
      A Georgia judge allowed Donald Trump to appeal his ruling last week that prosecutor Fani Willis could stay on the election subversion case against him, but only if special counsel Nathan Wade leaves.
      The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said he understood where Trump was coming from when he accused Democratic Jews of hating Israel and their religion – comments that drew accusation of antisemitism.
      Joe Biden announced new rules that could dramatically slash emissions from passenger cars and trucks to fight the climate crisis.
      Republicans invited two witnesses to today’s House oversight committee hearing: Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis, both former business associates of Hunter Biden.But only Bobulinski could actually show up, since Galanis is currently incarcerated for securities fraud.Bobulinski, meanwhile, has his own checkered past, one that the committee’s top Democrat Jamie Raskin made note of at the hearing:House Republicans have long clamored for Hunter Biden to appear before them.And while the president’s son did consent to a behind-closed-doors interview, NBC News reported that his lawyer last week told Republicans: “Mr Biden declines your invitation to this carnival side show.”So the oversight committee today left an empty seat with a placard reading “Mr Biden”, perhaps hoping he would make another surprise appearance:House Republicans appear to be pressing on with their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s alleged corruption, even as they have yet to turn up evidence that the president benefited from his family members’ overseas business dealings.They’re also dealing with the fallout from revelations that an informant crucial to their case received information from Russian intelligence. But as the House oversight committee gathered for their latest hearing in the investigation, Democratic lawmaker Jared Moskowitz sought to remind them by showing up in a Vladimir Putin mask: More

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      Arizona county fears ‘homelessness on steroids’ as migrant shelter funds end

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      An Arizona migrant shelter that has housed thousands of asylum seekers plans to halt most operations in two weeks when funding from Washington runs out, a problem for towns along the border where officials fear a surge in homelessness and extra costs.Arizona’s Pima county, which borders Mexico, has said that at the end of the month its contracts must stop with Tucson’s Casa Alitas shelter and services that transport migrants north from the border cities of Nogales, Douglas and Lukeville.The Pima county administrator, Jan Lesher, said the county could not afford the roughly $1m a week that previously would have been covered by federal funds.The amount “is not something that can be easily absorbed into a Pima county budget”, she said.Funding predicaments similar to Pima county’s are playing out in other border regions and faraway cities like New York City, Chicago and Denver that have received migrants.As in Tucson, other local governments anticipate that without federal dollars, communities will face many more migrants living on their streets, greater demands on police, hospitals and sanitation services.Pima county, which since 2019 has received over 400,000 migrants who have been processed by USborder authorities, estimated 400 to 1,000 migrants with nowhere to stay could start arriving daily in Tucson beginning in April.Congress faces a Friday deadline to fund the US Department of Homeland Security, which pays for migrant services, along with other federal agencies. Current money could be temporarily extended as a stopgap measure to keep DHS and other federal agencies running.View image in fullscreenBut additional funding for the shelter and transportation services has been caught in broader political battles about illegal migration and government spending, and Congress is at an impasse, largely due to election-year politics.Immigration is among the top three concerns for voting-age Americans, and Arizona is an election battleground state that could help decide control of the White House and US Senate.President Joe Biden, a Democrat running against the Republican former president Donald Trump for re-election on 5 November, has tried to appeal simultaneously to the Democratic base in favor of protecting asylum seekers while also courting other voters who want to reduce the number of illegal crossings from Mexico.Biden has grappled with record numbers of such migrants since he took office in 2021.In recent months, Biden has toughened his stance, blaming Republicans for opposing additional border security funding and legislation that would grant him new enforcement authority.Republicans counter that Biden should reinstate restrictive Trump policies and end new legal entry programs before Congress devotes more money to border security.‘Homelessness on steroids’Casa Alitas started in 2014 as a church effort to help Central American migrants whom authorities dropped at Tucson’s bus station. By 2023 it had served over 180,000 asylum seekers, mostly families, who are legally entitled to stay in the US as they pursue their immigration cases.While some migrants come from Mexico, Guatemala and other Latin American countries, Casa Alitas has recently housed people from west Africa, India and elsewhere.At one of five Casa Alitas shelter sites last week, migrants rested on cots and received meals, clean clothes, toiletries and assistance planning onward travel.Sara Vásquez González, 45, came with her husband and three of her six children from Chiapas, Mexico, where cartel violence has driven Mexican families to flee to the US.As they ate breakfast sandwiches, Vasquez said criminals had shot at their house, forcing them to seek refuge in the US.View image in fullscreen“We lost our house, our corn, our harvest,” she said.Casa Alitas has already told two-thirds of its 60-person workforce that they will be dismissed due to lack of funding, according to Diego Lopez, the executive director.The shelter plans to reduce its capacity from 1,400 people a day to 140, a level that may not even be enough to house all incoming families with infants and toddlers, he said.In December, Pima county received 46,000 migrants – more than ever before, according to county figures. Numbers have been just below 30,000 a month in January and February.In a February memo to Pima officials, Lesher said migrants being released by border patrol without shelter services could result in “homelessness on steroids”.Tucson officials are considering setting up a migrant site with bathrooms but no sleeping accommodations. By giving migrants “some place where they can go”, the city hopes to avoid people living on the streets and resulting calls on police and emergency services, said a county spokesperson, Mark Evans.The Democratic Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, last week sent a letter to top US lawmakers on funding committees saying her state needed at least $752m in shelter funds. In the meantime, Hobbs said in a press conference that her office was working to find ways to deal with the situation.‘Stopping the flow’In Congress, lawmakers representing the area are divided on the issue of shelter funding.Representative Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat who represents part of Pima county and more than 350 miles (563km) of the Mexico border, called for more federal funds and said Republicans were “continuing to exploit the humanitarian crisis for their political gain.”Representative Juan Ciscomani, a Republican whose district includes another part of Pima county, said in an interview that Biden should reinstate more restrictive Trump-era policies and increase deportations before Congress provides more money for migrant shelter and transportation.“We need to focus on what would actually solve the problem, which is stopping the flow at the border,” Ciscomani said. More

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      Biden says US needs fair tax code to ‘make this country great’ in speech on $7.3tn budget plan – as it happened

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      Joe Biden is making a speech about taxes, healthcare and costs, on a visit to the swing state of New Hampshire this afternoon.The US president is sifting out some points that he hammered during his state of the union address last week and is expanding on them in public addresses and election campaign events, as he ramps up his reelection efforts with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump marching towards the nomination to run against him.“I’m a capitalist. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” Biden told the crowd in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire.Biden wants to raise income taxes for those making over $400,000 a year, as well as raising corporation tax.“A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great,” he said.He slammed “my predecessor” – Trump – for “making $2tr in tax cuts” during his single term and “expanding the federal deficit”.He aspires, he said, with a cooperative congress, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans.He’s departing the stage now.Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Joe Biden revealed a new $7.3tn federal budget proposal, offering tax breaks for families, lower healthcare costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. The document promises to cut annual deficit spending by $3tn over 10 years, slowing but not halting the growth of the $34.5tn national debt. Here’s what is in Biden’s budget proposal.
      Biden travelled to the swing state of New Hampshire, as he tried to build on the energetic reboot of his presidency with his fiery state of the union speech last week. “Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need another $2tn tax breaks, because that’s what he (Trump) wants to do,” Biden said of Donald Trump. “I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make it fair.”
      House Republican leadership called Biden’s budget “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”. It’s “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline”, a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, speaker Mike Johnson, majority whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik said.
      Marcia Fudge, the housing and urban development (HUD) secretary, resigned. Fudge, 71, announced she will step down from her post later this month “with mixed emotions” and intends to retire after decades of public service, as she called for more focus on homelessness and more affordable housing.
      Donald Trump’s lawyers asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election, and jury selection is due to start 25 March.
      Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he once again repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.
      Peter Navarro, the former Trump adviser, must report to prison on 19 March to begin a four-month sentence for defying the House January 6 committee, his lawyers said.
      Karla Jacinto Romero, the woman whose story of being sex trafficked as a child was used in Katie Britt’s State of the Union rebuttal speech said her horrific ordeal was misused by the Republican senator.
      Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask.
      The White House unveiled a new $7.3tn federal budget proposal on Monday, offering tax breaks for families, lower health care costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.The proposal is unlikely to pass the House and the Senate, but it represents Joe Biden’s policy vision for a potential second four-year term if he and enough of his fellow Democrats win in November.Here’s what is in it:
      Raising the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%
      Making billionaires pay at least 25% of their income in taxes
      A 39.6% marginal rate applied to households making over $1m
      Raising tax rate on US multinationals’ foreign earnings from 10.5% to 21%
      Bringing back a child tax credit for low- and middle-income earners
      Fund childcare programs for parents making under $200,000 annually
      Funnel $258bn to building or preserving two million homes
      Creating a new tax credit for first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 over two years and providing a $5,000 annual mortgage relief credit for two years.
      Provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for workers
      Eliminating origination fees on government student loans
      Providing about $900bn for defense
      Funding to expand personnel and resources at the US southern border, including
      In addition, the president said in his State of the Union address that Medicare should have the ability to negotiate prices on 500 prescription drugs, which could save $200bn over 10 years. Aides said his budget does not specify how many drug prices would be subject to negotiations.Biden’s proposed budget would raise tax revenues by $4.9tn over 10 years, including more than $2.7tn in tax hikes on businesses and nearly $2tn on wealthy individuals and estates, according to the US treasury.A coalition of youth voters on Monday gave Joe Biden’s re-election campaign a welcome shot in the arm amid swirling concerns over the president’s age and mental acuity.The endorsement from 15 groups of mostly gen Z and young millennial voters was announced to mark the launch of Students for Biden-Harris, an initiative from the campaign designed to recapture the support of younger voters who helped propel Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020.Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who at 27 is the youngest member of the House, will serve on its national advisory board and host its first meeting in Washington DC on Thursday. The organization will hold regular virtual and in-person meetings around the country as it seeks to build a network of chapters, many on university and college campuses. Frost said in a press release announcing the coalition:
      Young voters were crucial in delivering the election for President Biden and Vice-President Harris in 2020, and they will be just as consequential in 2024.
      It is part of a wider White House outreach to younger voters, whose support for Biden, 81, and Harris has become more lukewarm as their first term has progressed, research suggests.Joe Biden is making a speech about taxes, healthcare and costs, on a visit to the swing state of New Hampshire this afternoon.The US president is sifting out some points that he hammered during his state of the union address last week and is expanding on them in public addresses and election campaign events, as he ramps up his reelection efforts with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump marching towards the nomination to run against him.“I’m a capitalist. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” Biden told the crowd in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire.Biden wants to raise income taxes for those making over $400,000 a year, as well as raising corporation tax.“A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great,” he said.He slammed “my predecessor” – Trump – for “making $2tr in tax cuts” during his single term and “expanding the federal deficit”.He aspires, he said, with a cooperative congress, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans.He’s departing the stage now.Joe Biden has just taken the stage in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he is about to speak about the economy, health care and prescription drug prices.The address comes after he sent his aspirational 2025 budget to Congress, following his return on Monday morning to Washington from Delaware, and then flew to the New England swing state.Biden is on a push to hit the campaign trail, trying to build on the energetic reboot of his presidency with his fiery state of the union speech last week, in the face of criticisms that he is too old and doddery to run for reelection.Out of the gate he is hailing his plan, under the Inflation Reduction Act, to cap the total that seniors on Medicare pay for prescription drugs at $2,000 a head per year.“We beat Big Pharma,” he said of the US pharmaceutical industry.Hello, US politics blog readers, Joe Biden has arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire, shortly after presenting his desired budget to Congress. He’s due to make remarks at 2.30pm ET on, according to the White House, on “lowering costs for American families”. Later he has an election campaign event, as he continues with his plans to hit the campaign trail hard in the wake of his State of the Union speech last Thursday, as he tries to sell votes on his reection.Here’s where things stand:
      Housing and urban development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge, 71, has announced that later this month she will step down from her post “with mixed emotions” and retire after fighting for more affordable housing and reduced homelessness in the US.
      Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the US supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election, and jury selection is due to start March 25.
      House Republican leadership called Joe Biden’s budget, just presented to Congress, “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”. It’s “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik said.
      The US president unveiled a $7.3tn budget proposal offering tax breaks for families, lower health care costs and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Biden’s 2025 fiscal year budget includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 from 21%, hiking rates on people making over $400,000 and effoprts to bring more drug costs down.
      Donald Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he once again repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.
      Peter Navarro, a top former Trump administration official, has been ordered to report to a Miami prison on 19 March to begin serving a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Navarro, 74, was found guilty in September 2023 of two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to produce documents and testimony in the congressional investigation.
      Karla Jacinto Romero, the woman whose experience as a victim of human sex trafficking that Alabama Senator Katie Britt appeared to have shared in the GOP response to the State of the Union, slammed the lawmaker and accused her of inaccurately using her story to highlight the Biden administration’s border control policies, even though her plight was experienced during a previous, Republican administration.
      Housing and urban development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge has announced that later this month she will step down from her post “with mixed emotions” and intends to retire after decades of public service, accompanying her news with a call for more focus on homelessness and more affordable housing.She also appeared to time her announcement so that she could step away before the 2024 presidential election reaches its most intense phases this summer and fall, calling the election season, in an exclusive interview with USA Today “crazy, silly”.Fudge, 71, intends to return to her home state of Ohio after 22 March and continue life as a private citizen, rather than running for any other public office, she told USA Today in an exclusive interview.
      “It’s time to go home. I do believe strongly that I have done just about everything I could do at HUD for this administration as we go into this crazy, silly season of an election,” she told the outlet.
      Fudge said affordable housing should be a nonpartisan focus.
      It is not a red or blue issue. Everybody knows that it is an issue…an American issue.’’
      She told USA Today that under her tenure at the agency, since the start of the Biden administration, she worked to improve its role in supporting families with housing needs, helping people experiencing homelessness and boosting economic development in communities.Joe Biden issued a statement praising Fudge.
      Over the past three years she has been a strong voice for expanding efforts to build generational wealth through homeownership and lowering costs and promoting fairness for America’s renters. Thanks to Secretary Fudge, we’ve helped first-time homebuyers, and we are working to cut the cost of renting. And there are more housing units under construction right now than at any time in the last 50 years.”
      Joe Biden’s budget proposal for 2025 includes a $4.7bn emergency fund for border security to enable the department of homeland security to ramp up operations in the event of a migrant surge, NBC reported.The contingency fund would allow the department to tap into funds as an as-needed basis when the number of undocumented migrants crossing the southern border tops a certain threshold, according to the report. That threshold is unspecified in the document.The request is likely to fall on deaf ears among congressional Republicans, who have already refused to fund $13.6bn the Biden administration asked for in an emergency supplemental request aimed at responding to a record high number of migrants crossing the border.Biden’s budget also asks for $405m to hire 1,300 more border patrol agents, $1bn for aid to Central America to address the root causes of migration, and nearly $1bn to address the backlog of over 2.4m pending cases in US immigration courts.Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity.Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election.Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.The trial is set to begin on 25 March in a New York state court in Manhattan.In their court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers said the claim of a pressure campaign was “fictitious” and argued that prosecutors should not be allowed to present evidence about Trump’s public statements about Cohen from that year because he made those statements in his official capacity as president.The supreme court last month agreed to take up the claim that Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. It is scheduled to hear arguments in that case during the week of 22 April.The House Republican leadership have issued a statement calling Joe Biden’s budget “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”.The president’s budget is “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik reads.
      While hardworking Americans struggle with crushing inflation and mounting national debt, the President would increase their pain to spend trillions of additional taxpayer dollars to advance his left-wing agenda.
      Biden aides said their budget was realistic and detailed while rival measures from Republicans were not financially viable.“Congressional Republicans don’t tell you what they cut, who they harm,” AP reported White House budget director Shalanda Young as saying.
      The president is transparent, details every way he shows he values the America people.
      House Republicans voted on Thursday on their own budget resolution for the next fiscal year out of committee, saying it would trim deficits by $14tn over 10 years. But their measure would depend on rosy economic forecasts and sharp spending cuts. The White House called the plan unworkable.Joe Biden unveiled a $7.3tn budget proposal aimed as election-year pitch to voters that would offer tax breaks for families, lower health care costs and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.Biden’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year that starts in October includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 from 21%, hiking rates on people making over $400,000, forcing those with wealth of $100m to pay at least 25% of their income in taxes, and letting the government negotiate to bring more drug costs down, Reuters reported.Meanwhile, the government would bring back a child tax credit for low- and middle-income earners, fund childcare programs, funnel $258bn to building homes, provide paid family leave for workers, and spends billions on violent crime prevention and law enforcement.The document promises to cut annual deficit spending by $3tn over 10 years, slowing but not halting the growth of the $34.5tn national debt. Biden also renewed his demand for funding on border security, Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and other national security issues that has been stalled by Republican congressional leadership for months.White House budgets are always something of a presidential wishlist, and Biden’s proposal is unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law. Biden and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, and they provided the fine print on Monday, AP reported.Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask.Footage posted to social media showed attendees at the Johnson county Republican event kicking and beating the dummy, which was wearing a Biden mask and a T-shirt displaying the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon”, a rightwing meme mean to disparage Biden.Dinah Sykes, the Democratic minority leader in the state Senate, told the Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news site:
      Political violence of any kind is vile and wrong, and we cannot afford to brush it under the rug when others encourage it.
      Sykes called for state Republican leaders to take action against those responsible. Mike Brown, the Kansas Republican party chair, told the Kansas City Star he was not at the event, which was not organised by the state party, though he sent emails to promote it. Mike Kuckelman, a former state Republican chair, condemned the event.Donald Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.Trump, in an interview with CNBC, described the numerous judgments against him in New York as “the most ridiculous decisions … including the Ms Bergdorf Goodman, a person I’d never met.” He added:
      I have no idea who she is, except one thing, I got sued. From that point on I said, ‘Wow, that’s crazy, what this is.
      Trump was referring to Carroll, who in 2019 first publicly accused the former president of raping her in the changing room of Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Manhattan department store.On Saturday during a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump said Carroll “is not a believable person” and blamed the lawsuit on “Democratic operatives”. He said:
      Ninety-one million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her.
      Carroll’s lawyer has raised the prospect of a new lawsuit, the New York Times reported. In a statement this morning, Roberta A Kaplan, said:
      The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years. As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client.
      Donald Trump “will not give a penny” to Ukraine if he is re-elected US president, the far-right Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said after a controversial meeting with Trump in Florida.“He will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Orbán told state media in Hungary on Sunday.
      Therefore, the war will end, because it is obvious that Ukraine can not stand on its own feet.
      According to Orbán, Trump has a “detailed plan” to end the Ukraine war, which began two years ago when Russia invaded. Calling Trump “a man of peace”, Orbán said:
      If the Americans don’t give money and weapons, along with the Europeans, the war is over. And if the Americans don’t give money, the Europeans alone can’t finance this war. And then the war is over.
      This would likely mean Ukraine losing the war to Russia. Long seen to demonstrate deference towards and enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, Trump recently suggested that if re-elected he would encourage Russia to attack US allies he deemed not to contribute enough to the Nato alliance.Orbán and Trump met at Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, last weekend. More

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      Katie Britt defends sex trafficking story she falsely links to Biden presidency

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      In her first interview since delivering her widely ridiculed rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, Republican senator Katie Britt refused to apologize for invoking a story about child rape that she implied resulted from the president’s handling of the ongoing crisis at the southern US border – even though the abuse occurred years earlier in Mexico while her party controlled the White House.Britt, 42, appeared on Fox News Sunday and denied hiding the fact that the rape and sex trafficking case to which she referred had actually occurred during the presidency of George W Bush. She also made it a point to criticize what she called “the liberal media” for how they have covered her rebuttal to Biden’s speech on Thursday, which earned being parodied on the latest episode of Saturday Night Live.“I very specifically said … I very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12. So I didn’t say a teenager – I didn’t say a young woman,” Britt replied after being asked whether she intended to give the impression that the abuse occurred under the Biden administration’s watch. “[It was] a grown woman … trafficked when she was 12.”Britt also said: “To me, it is disgusting to try to silence the voice of telling the story of what it is like to be sex trafficked.”The junior Alabama senator’s remarks to Fox News Sunday came after even her fellow Republicans pronounced her rejoinder on Thursday to Biden’s State of the Union speech – from the setting of a kitchen – “one of our biggest disasters”.During that rebuttal, as she oscillated between smiling and seeming to fight back tears, Britt described traveling to the Del Rio sector of the US-Mexico border and speaking to a woman whom the senator said had relayed horrific experiences.“She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12,” Britt said. “She told me not just that she was raped every day – but how many times a day she was raped.”Britt avoided saying when or where the abuse took place. But she strongly implied that it had stemmed from the Biden administration’s management of immigration issues at the southern border.“We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America. And it’s past time we start acting like it. President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace,” Britt said. “It’s despicable, and it’s almost entirely preventable.”On Friday, in a seven-minute video on TikTok, author and former Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz established that Britt was describing events that unfolded in Mexico in between 2004 and 2008, when Bush was president.The tale centered on Karla Jacinto Romero, an activist who in May 2015 testified to Congress about her experiences at the hands of sex traffickers who held her captive between the ages of 12 and 16 in her native Mexico. Britt met Jacinto Romero on a visit to the border with other Republican senators in January 2023.But while the meeting with Jacinto Romero, now 31, occurred shortly after Britt took office, her abuse occurred as many as two decades earlier and not in the US.Katz lambasted Britt as dishonest and misleading, and many others have since done the same. A Biden White House spokesperson on Sunday issued a statment which said Britt had peddled “debunked lies”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for Britt confirmed to the Washington Post that the senator was referring to Jacinto Romero in her speech Thursday. Yet that spokesperson also insisted Britt’s presentation of Jacinto Romero’s story was “100% correct”. And Britt doubled down on that position Sunday.“This is a story of what is happening,” Britt said. “We have to tell those stories, and the liberal media needs to pay attention to it because there are victims all the way coming to the border, there are victims at the border, and then there are victims all throughout the country.”Britt’s guest spot on Fox News Sunday came hours after the actor Scarlett Johansson stood in a kitchen portraying the Alabama senator and satirized the latter’s State of the Union rebuttal on Saturday Night Live’s cold open.Among other things, Johansson said sarcastically: “I’ve invited you into this empty kitchen because Republicans want me to appeal to women voters and women love kitchens.”Britt went out of her way Sunday to explain “exactly why [she] was sitting at a kitchen table” when she rebutted Biden.“Republicans care about kitchen table issues,” Britt said. “We care about faith, family. We care about freedom.” More

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      Dehumanizing, inaccurate and outdated: why did Biden say ‘illegals’ in his State of the Union address?

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      Joe Biden’s seemingly off-the-cuff use of “illegal” to describe people who are undocumented during his State of the Union address drew disappointed reaction from experts who have long argued the term is inaccurate and outdated.Responding to heckling from conservative congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who demanded Biden mention the name of Laken Riley – a Georgia nursing student who was allegedly killed by a person who is undocumented – Biden held up a button of Riley’s face and said she was an “innocent, young woman who was killed by an illegal”.He added: “But how many thousands of people being killed by legals? To the parents, I say, my heart goes out to you, having lost children myself. I understand.”Democrats and immigrant rights organizations said Biden’s use of “illegal” as dehumanizing. The Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez said she was “disappointed” in Biden’s use of what she called “dehumanizing right wing rhetoric” to describe immigrants. “No human being is illegal,” Ramirez said. Another Illinois representative, Chuy García, added: “As a proud immigrant, I’m extremely disappointed to hear President Biden use the world “illegal”.The National Immigrant Justice Center called the term “words [from] anti-immigrant extremists”, adding: “Manipulating a personal tragedy for political gain in this way is dangerous. Conflating immigration status with criminality is racist and dehumanizing.”Immigration advocates have long argued that the term “illegals” is an inaccurate term, as entering the US without documents is not a criminal offense. It is also a racially charged term that can promote violence and discrimination, according to the Drop the I-Word campaign, which advocates for media organizations not to use it when describing immigrants.The Biden administration itself ordered US immigration enforcement agencies to stop using the terms “illegal alien” and “assimilation” in 2021, guidelines meant to encourage more inclusive language.“We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody,” said Troy Miller, a senior official at Customs and Border Protection, in the 2021 memo.On Friday, addressing reporters after the speech Michael Tyler, Biden’s campaign communications director, did not directly comment on the term but instead pointed to Trump’s previous comments on immigrants and extremist policies.“I know it may have been difficult to hear over the incessant heckling of Marjorie Taylor Greene last night, but we should be very clear about what the president was saying when it comes to fixing our broken system and to rejecting the cruelty in the hateful extremism that’s being pushed by people like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who were actually just trying to demonize immigrants in an attempt to score political points.“We are running this campaign against a man who was promising to rip kids away from their mothers again, who’s promising to erect mass deportation camps, who is promising to end birthright citizenship and is using hate as one of its chief political currencies,” Tyler added.Biden’s remarks come after a bipartisan bill to introduce stricter immigration measures was rejected by Republicans. The president has reportedly said he is considering unilateral action that would sharply restrict the ability of people to claim asylum at the US-Mexico border.Progressive lawmakers said such a move would compare to the hardline strategy of Donald Trump when he was president, but Biden defended his handling of the migrant crisis in the State of the Union address, criticizing Trump’s actions.“Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more,” he said.In his speech he pushed Republicans to back the border bill they themselves had helped negotiate. “Conservatives got together and said [it] was a good bill,” he said, speaking directly to Republicans present for the speech. “That bipartisan bill would hire 1,500 more security agents and officers, 100 more immigration judges to help tackle the backload of 2 million cases. 4,300 more asylum officers and new policy so they can resolve cases in six months instead of six years.“What are you against?”The Republican senator James Lankford seemed to agree with Biden’s characterization of the bill, mouthing “that’s true” and nodding. More

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      Trump takes bizarre turn as he ratchets up racist rhetoric against migrants

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      Reaching for racist rhetoric bizarre even for him, Donald Trump compared undocumented migrants to the US to Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer and cannibal famously played by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the Oscar-winning 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs.“They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums,” the former president and probable Republican presidential nominee claimed in an interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network on Monday. “You know, insane asylums, that’s Silence of the Lambs stuff.“Hannibal Lecter? Anybody know Hannibal Lecter?”To laughter from the audience at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump added: “We don’t want ’em in this country.”Trump has made such statements before, including in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland last month. As framed to Right Side, they were the latest piece of extremist and dehumanizing invective from a candidate seeking to make immigration a core issue of the 2024 presidential campaign.Trump has a long history of such racist statements, having launched his successful 2016 presidential campaign by describing Mexicans crossing the southern border as rapists and drug dealers.His liking for Lecter led him to claim, at a rally last October, that the actor who played the character “said on television, ‘I love Donald Trump’, so I love him”.Hopkins has not publicly said he loves Trump. In 2018, he told the Guardian: “I don’t vote because I don’t trust anyone.” Brian Cox, another actor to have played Lecter on screen, has called Trump “such a fucking asshole” and “so full of shit”.In 2016, Mads Mikkelsen, who played Lecter on television, told CBS News that though he could “definitely laugh at some of the stuff [Trump] says”, he “can also go, ‘Oh my God, did he say that?’ I think he’s a fresh wind for some people.”Trump is an alleged serial offender, facing 91 criminal charges as he runs for office.Yet despite those charges (17 for election subversion, 40 for retention of classified information, 34 for hush-money payments to an adult film star) and multimillion-dollar civil penalties over his business affairs and a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”, Trump dominates the Republican primary.He also leads Joe Biden in most general election polling – surveys subject to warnings from experts about sampling techniques and accuracy so far out from election day.Super Tuesday: read more
      Everything you need to know about Super Tuesday
      Key issues in the 2024 US election
      Trump all but certain of Republican nomination
      Trump spoke to Right Side the night before Super Tuesday, when 16 states and one territory were scheduled to hold primary votes. Trump’s last, pulverised Republican opponent, Nikki Haley, was widely expected to end her campaign soon after.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs in his successful run for president in 2016, Trump is seeking to use problems at the southern border – high numbers of arrivals from Central America presented as a crisis, real or not – as a central campaign issue.At his direction, Senate Republicans sank a bipartisan deal on border and immigration reform. House Republicans have refused to move on the issue.Biden has sought to emphasise Trump and Republicans’ refusal to work on solving the border problem. The president’s campaign has also repeatedly slammed Trump for using far-right, fascistic language when discussing migrants, including a repeated claim migrants are “poisoning the blood” of America. The Biden campaign directly compared those remarks to Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric during his rise to power in Germany.Speaking to Right Side, Trump repeated another campaign-trail complaint, about languages spoken by migrants to the US.“We don’t even have teachers of some of these languages,” he said. “Who would think that? We have languages that are, like, from, from the planet Mars? Nobody, nobody knows how to, you know, speak it.”On Trump’s father’s side, his ancestors spoke German. His mother was also a migrant, growing up in the Scottish islands, in a household that spoke Gaelic. His first wife, Ivana Trump, the mother of his three oldest children, spoke Czech. Melania Trump, his third wife and the mother of his son Barron, is Slovenian.Trump also made a blatantly false claim about everyday life in cities where large numbers of migrants have arrived, many bussed or flown in by Republican governors.“We have children that are no longer going to school,” Trump said. “They’re throwing them out of the park. There’s no more Little Leagues [children’s baseball], there’s no more sports, there’s no more life in New York and so many of these cities.” More